Cherry Picking History:

We Americans do a strange thing. I call it cherry picking history. But one could as easily call it gerrymandering history. We pick and choose what we want to remember. It is as though we move forward through time by looking constantly in a rear view mirror. But it is more than just that we look to the past we constantly change the record of the past. Over the past 140 odd years the seminal events of the mid part of the 19th century have become hopelessly blurred in the minds of most Americans.

Now this follows on top of the already fractured view that most if not all Americans hold of the past as it regards the Native Americans. To better see that distortion ask yourself who settled America and when was it settled. Words begin to flow from the mouths of our citizens perhaps describing the landings of the Spanish in the Caribbean Islands. Others begin their narrative in what was to become Virginia. Still others begin to tell the tale of the Plymouth colony. The trek made from Asia across the Bering Sea is forgotten completely.

If the true origins of the true settlers of America have been forgotten so too have the struggles of the remnants of the black slaves so unhappily forced to plant, chop and harvest the major export of America cotton. The north never grew cotton to any extent. Cotton remains largely a southern crop, with the exception of California and Arizona. Cotton and slaves are chained together forever in my mind. Black hands picking white strands in the heat of a southern autumn. I can almost hear the circadian throb in the air. Do not let this tranquil image blur your mind to the flow of blood and tears and gun powder that have watered and fertilized these cotton fields. The pivotal events that still shape us as a nation today were played out upon these very hills and valleys.

The struggles and losses of the American Native have to a large extent been forgotten. Only today are the last vestiges of Indian heritage being removed by gambling establishments in places like Kinder Louisiana. The Indian reservation provides the land and law that permits the white America to once again speak out of both sides of his mouth. He may pray in church and gamble the Saturday night before both with ease if not grace.

We are in the closing days of a presidential race. Somehow it seems fitting that as this race draws to a close the folly of the almost totally white dominated banking system of America and Wall Street itself is in chaos. Are there signs in all of this? Is a chapter of American history drawing to a close? Is it American history that is ending or is it just changing into the history of the many diverse peoples that have always composed America? Will our history begin to reflect the struggles and contributions of all of the people all of the time. Or will we once again turn our backs upon the truth and continue to live in a haze of drugs and petroleum.